Monday night: new craft center shift. I seem to be on the "cute guy" shift, or at least the "guy" shift. The manager and I are the only girls on, which is interesting. (Folks, don't get your hopes up- one's married and the others are way too young, and I ain't dating anyway.) Things were pretty much dead, so I didn't do a whole lot of anything besides crochet a boa.

Definitely harder in some respects, though:

(a) There's three labs that I want to avoid cleaning: ceramics, wood, and photography. I know nothing about the first two and haven't done the third since high school. Now last quarter, this wasn't an issue. K's mom is a ceramics teacher and was usually teaching a class, so she did that room. M did the wood room, and the other two girls on shift did photography, so I never ended up doing any of them.

This time, M was off on his honeymoon and I got directed into wood, where I read the instructions on the wall and was all, "What?!" There's evidently some kind of air guns in the room you're supposed to shoot off, and I don't even know HOW. One of the guys had to come in and tell me what to do.

(b) New manager (M2) apparently doesn't let everyone leave until she's checked the cash register, and M2 isn't good at it. She called one of the day managers to come over and tell her what to do. I find this kind of surprising- I'd be totally inane at checking the finances too, but then again, I probably wouldn't apply for a job involving math because of it. She's a nice chick though.

Still, I suspect this means no leaving before 10:30 any more the way I used to. Guh. The guys and I ended up waiting on the couches, talking about rings we'd made too big while we waited.

(c) Potluck...guhhhhhh. At least (a) no shift next Monday for holiday, and (b) I got salad. So long as it's not main course I'm probably good, and Jess said to let her know when I'm doing main course and she'll do it for me. Awww.

Last night I went rock climbing here. Jess and co. got memberships and have been climbing the walls every night since, or so I hear, and she invited me along. "If I can do it, you can do it." This seemed about right, (not to mention that her six-year-old can do it) so I said yes... and then thought, "Oh, crap, I have no upper body strength, where did I get the idea that I can do this?"

Did I mention that while on the Vacation-From-Hell, I read The Jane Austen Book Club, which is pretty much set here (I don't know why she doesn't mention the name of our town when it's pretty freaking obvious where it's located, especially if you mention "small town college near Sacramento." Plus I know where two of the characters live if it's "by the Pi Beta Phi, or Phi Beta Pi, whatever" house.). One of the characters, the most adventure-seeking/accident-attracting one, actually goes to Rocknasium (name not mentioned, but you can tell) and starts climbing the walls without waiting for her climbing buddy to show up (and not using the auto-belay to catch her ass, apparently), falls, and goes to the emergency room. Nothing happens to her, really, but having this come into my head as I'm trying to figure out how to attach the straps to my ass didn't help. I wonder if the Rocknasium owners know about their business being in the book with an accident in it?

Anyway, I came out of it uninjured and able to use my hands to knit and type, so that worked out. It's surprisingly easy to do when there's plenty of easy-grip rocks of different shapes and sizes built into the wall, and not too stressful as long as I didn't look down all that often, or think about how long it seemed to come down off the rope as opposed to how I got up there. I climbed like a freaking monkey, and this is coming from a girl who can't do pushups for very long or figure out how to climb a tree. Hell, I figured out that you could do "pushups" against the rock wall by climbing on in the "cave" area.

Not exactly an activity you can do alone, but it was pretty damn cool. Jess invited me to her husband's rock-climbing birthday party after that.

She did make a comment I wasn't too thrilled with. On e-mail she was saying something like "you'll want children once you find the right guy, albeit you may not find him in your lifetime." I suppose she would think that way considering that her husband was so childfree before meeting her he tried to get a vasectomy when he was 17 or so. How that changed, I have no idea. I said uh, no, I don't think "the right guy" would convert me here.

While in Rocknasium, we were sitting around at one point while Julian (her son) was eating a Butterfinger, and she told him to be really obnoxious so I wouldn't want kids. I was a bit taken aback, and said, "Actually, his age is fine by me, I like them when they can talk. It's babies I have issues with."

"You should be one of those Big Sister people," she said. Well, I'd agree with that- if I had to raise someone, an adopted kid would be the way I'd go. I'd rather meet a nice girl, get to know her first, go dating, then figure out if the both of us are ready to commit... you know what I mean.

As for today, it was the first knitting class. Which went pretty well- learned how to knit and purl, though I'm not exactly sure what to do with each. The teacher wants us to bring in some easy project with big yarn to do so we can finish it in the first two weeks or so. She suggested hats and socks, but it's summer, dammit, and I don't wanna. I did pick up a pattern and yarn for a feathery vest and showed her the pattern, and she said it was all right to do- just don't start with a sweater here.

There's a sale at the yarn store on Saturday- 15% off yarn. The annoying thing is they're having a 2-hour sale where if you buy between 12 and 2, you get 40% off...and that's when dance class is. Arghhhhhh, that's annoying.

I really should go practice knitting and purling instead of writing this entry, really...

In other activity news, I think I've found something to actually do for the Fourth of July. Heather and the Cowboy are going to a rodeo (I suspect he talked her into it by mentioning the carnival attached to it) and the Cowboy invited me along. This should be entertaining, especially if the Cowboy manages to talk Heather into wearing the hat and boots he got her in public.